Sunday, December 31, 2017

OMNI

CRITICAL
THINKING, SKEPTICISM NEWSLETTER #4, December 31, 2017.Compiled by Dick Bennett for a
Culture of Peace.

(#1 July 5, 2011; #2 October 18, 2012; #3 March 16, 2013).

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

What’s at stake: Several
years ago on the same day I read the latest no. of Skeptical
Inquirer and began reading the 2nd ed. of David Swanson's War
Is a Lie, I was struck yet
again by the similarities in the lies and myths that create fundamentalist
religious belief and belief in the paranormal, and the lies and myths that
cause and sustain wars. Resistance to both is also similar: particularly
strong education in questioning assumptions and claims and in the use of
evidence. Now myths and lies motivate or are exploited by deniers of
anthropogenic global warming, and the cure again includes critical thinking, of
which science is the foundation.

NEW
YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important
explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how
Donald Trump became presidentof
the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have
read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell

How did
we get here?In this sweeping, eloquent history of America,
Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this
post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new,
but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was
founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters
and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.

Over the
course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the
Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the
anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish
for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastichas
made America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged. From the
start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic
fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend
to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is
ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen
explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the
rails.Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect
moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the
culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines
between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read
this book.

ABOUT FANTASYLAND

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important explanation, and the
fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States
. . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this
year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell

How did we get here?

In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s
happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all
living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our
national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers,
and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded
in our DNA.

Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to
the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes,
wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and
obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastichas made
America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged. From the
start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic
fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend
to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is
ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great
American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.

Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want
to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if
you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become
dangerously blurred, you must read this book.

Praise for Fantasyland

“With this rousing book, [Kurt] Andersen proves to be the kind of clear-eyed
critic an anxious country needs in the midst of a national crisis.”—San
Francisco Chronicle

“A frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in
steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping
into their beards.”—The Guardian

“This is an important book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in
the age of Trump. It’s an eye-opening history filled with brilliant insights, a
saga of how we were always susceptible to fantasy, from the Puritan
fanatics to the talk-radio and Internet wackos who mix show business, hucksterism,
and conspiracy theories.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Timesbestselling
author of Leonardo da Vinci

Dec
20, 2017. Your new book, Fantasyland:
How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, is a theory about how the
triumph of the radical right, and Donald Trump in particular, are only part of
the culmination of a long historical process. Can you explain? KURT ANDERSEN:
We began, of course, ...

GENERAL

Guy
Harrison. Good Thinking. Prometheus,
2015. 290pp. Briefly rev. in Skeptical Inquirer (Nov. Dec. 2015): A“guide based
on the view that skepticism is the
essential posture for the twenty-first century human being and critical thinking the indispensable
skill for living in modern society.” An
earlier book by this author: Think: Why You Should Question Everything. --Dick

On Think: “A clear and passionate book on
skepticism, clear thinking, and a wide range of juicy paranormal claims. A
great and fun read for everyone. Harrison succeeds at motivating, inspiring,
and indeed haunting the reader. As he says, ‘Think before you believe.’
Required reading for anyone who doesn’t want to waste time, health, money, and
dignity on things that probably are not real or true.” —Jonathan C. Smith, PhD, professor of
psychology, Chicago’s Roosevelt University; author ofPseudoscience and Extraordinary
Claims of the Paranormal

Guy P. Harrisonis an award-winning journalist and the author ofThink:
Why You Should Question Everything, 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian,50
Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True,50
Reasons People Give for Believing in a God,andRace and Reality: What Everyone Should Know
about Our Biological Diversity.He
has won several international awards for his writing, including the World
Health Organization's award for health reporting and the Commonwealth Media
Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Have you ever
noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their
deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact,
people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming
evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be
under threat by the conflicting data.

Creationists,
for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they
are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers
distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to
believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one
and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused
of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel
in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they
think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New
World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of
greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of
markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government
regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form
birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's
first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country. MORE |
Scientific American January 2017 Issue

This article
was originally published with the title "When Facts Backfire"

Michael
Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com). His book The
Moral Arc (Henry Holt, 2015) is out in paperback.

All of us base
our actions on a mixture of beliefs and
conclusions. "Beliefs" are principles, generally inculcated by
upbringing and tradition, to which we are attached emotionally, fervently, and
certainly. "Conclusions" are more rational, more tentative, and based
on evidence from daily life or information sources such as newspapers. This
distinction is subtle, sometimes ambiguous, but crucial. There is ample
evidence in the turmoil and tragedy of nearly every Mideast nation today that a
population's strong attachment to extreme beliefs leads to disastrous public
policy. I would also argue that the social success of northern Europe
demonstrates that nations operating more on conclusions and less on beliefs are
more successful. I'm painting with a broad brush in the two preceding
sentences, and there are plenty of exceptions, but the general point is valid.
For just one example, a 2015 CNN poll of national happiness listed 7 northern
European nations plus Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as the 10 happiest
nations in the world. In my opinion, this is partly a consequence of the low
level of religious belief in northern Europe, along with their moderate and
rational politics (welfare state capitalism). America is an anomaly in that it
is rich, highly dysfunctional socially, and highly religious. There's strong
evidence the latter two are linked, much as they are in the Mideast. In 2009,
paleontologist and sociologist Gregory Paul published a study of religion and
dysfunctionality, based on existing statistics, of 17 prosperous nations
including most of western Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and
the U.S. He ranked nations on the basis of 25 social indicators such as
homicide rates, teenage abortion rates, and poverty rates, and 9 religiosity
indicators such as belief in God, frequency of prayer, and biblical literalism.
Paul found a high correlation between religiosity and social dysfunction. The
U.S. was an extreme outlier, being by far the most socially dysfunctional and
by far the most religious. Ireland and Italy were similar but less extreme. At
the other end of both scales were Japan, Sweden, and Denmark as least religious
and least dysfunctional. America is also exceptional in basing national policy
on beliefs rather than conclusions. Here are a few examples. Global warming: A
remarkable scientific consensus agrees global warming is real, it poses a
serious threat, and it's caused primarily by humans. Yet only 67 percent of
Americans think Earth is getting warmer. Breaking this figure down politically,
84 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of Republicans, and 25 percent of Tea Party
Republicans agree Earth is getting warmer. Thus we see a cultural divide
between "thinkers" and "believers" on this issue.
Biological evolution: Only 47 percent of Americans agree with the overwhelming
consensus among biological scientists that humans developed from earlier
species of animals. Incredibly, according to a 2014 Gallup poll, 42 percent of
Americans believe that God created humans within the past 10,000 years. Among
Gregory Paul's 16 other prosperous nations, agreement with the scientific
consensus ranges from 64 percent (Ireland) to 80 percent (Sweden, Japan,
Denmark, France). Abortion: It's superstitious dogma to argue that a new
fetus--a fertilized egg--is fully human and to argue, as for example Republican
candidate Mike Huckabee does, that it should be accorded full constitutional
rights. This would imply that abortion is always murder, in which case nature
or God would be the world's most prolific murderer, because most fertilized
eggs either do not implant in the uterus or else miscarry after implantation. A
fetus only begins to become fully human when organized brain waves appear,
which occurs in the seventh month of pregnancy. Ironically, the evidence shows
that legal restrictions on abortions actually increase abortions:
Internationally, the legality of abortion is negatively correlated with its
frequency. Thus those who oppose abortion should, rationally, support
organizations such as Planned Parenthood and oppose restrictions on the
procedure. Guns and violence: A committed core of true believers continues to
resist rational restrictions on gun ownership in America, despite massive
evidence that widespread gun ownership is strongly linked to homicide and
injury. Peer nations with much stronger gun restrictions have far lower
homicide rates, and Americans living in states such as Arkansas having high gun
ownership rates are four times more likely to be killed by a gun than are
Americans living in states having low gun ownership rates (see my August 4
column). Could America find solutions to its social dysfunctionality by relying
less on emotional beliefs and more on rational conclusions? The evidence seems
to answer "yes."

Robert
Bartholomew and Peter Hassall. A Colorful History of Popular
Delusions. Prometheus, 2015. 352pp.
Conceptualizes
two main categories—social panics and enthusiasms—and 12 topics. –Dick

From
the simplest forms (a single word, category, or phrase) to infinitely complex
constructions (an idiom, or proverb, or algorithm) analogies are the
tools our brains use to interpret and master daily life. This book argues that analogy
is the basis for all human thoughts.Full description

At the age of
eighty-seven, the renowned linguist, philosopher, historian, cognitive scientist,
and critic Noam Chomsky maintains the same clarity found in any of his books,
lectures, or television appearances dating back to the 1970s. While in a
face-to-face conversation he might adopt an informal and humorous tone towards
relevant topics, he is very much that same serious and detailed thinker we all
recognize from the conferences and different interviews—one of those
individuals history will remember for centuries. MORE http://thehumanist.com/magazine/july-august-2016/features/rescuing-memory

We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data all
just two swipes away. But how much of this is of value? How much is mis-, or
even dis-information? Lots. And your search engine can’t tell the difference.
As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the rational
discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as
climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging
threats to public health. This book provides an inoculation against the
misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. Anyone can do
it — indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to long survive on this
crowded and finite planet.

"A Survival Guide for the Misinformation Age is
an impassioned plea for science literacy. Given the state of the world today,
in which scientifically under-informed voters elect scientifically illiterate
politicians, Professor David Helfand has written the right book at the right
time with the right message. Read it now. The future of our civilization may
depend on it."
--Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist

Advertisers, public figures, and
the media in general regularly misinform the public, but the Internet has taken
this to a new level, reports Helfand, former chair of Columbia University’s
department of astronomy. This cheerful corrective defines and demolishes many
categories of nonsense. Warning that the brain is programmed to find patterns
where none exist and to prefer simple, vivid explanations for reality, Helfand
proceeds to show how competent scientists work and how to tell good evidence
from bad. This turns out to be no simple task. Even scientists fail regularly,
and readers must be prepared for meticulous explanations of scatter plots,
Gaussian and Poisson distributions, proxies, and probability. Popular science
writers traditionally boast that they will go light on mathematics, but Helfand
will have none of that. As Jonathan Swift wrote, “Reasoning will never make a
man correct an ill opinion which by reasoning he never acquired,” so this book
will not attract climate-change deniers, anti-vaccine activists, creationists,
astrology lovers, and the like. Darrell Huff’s delightful 1954 classic How
to Lie with Statistics may be more accessible, but Helfand’s work is
an admirable response to a long-standing problem of sloppy thinking. (Mar.
2016)

DALE JAMIESON, REASON IN A
DARK TIME: WHY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE FAILED—AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR
OUR FUTURE. OXFORD UP, 2014.Description

·Not a "save the earth" book but a sober diagnosis of
why we have failed and a proposal for concrete steps for how to move ahead. Argues that common sense notions of
responsibility are inadequate for moralizing acts that contribute to climate
change. Reflects on how we, as
individuals, can live meaningful lives in the face of climate change. Treats the scientific, historical, economic,
and political dimensions of climate changes as well as the philosophical ones.

The Rational Animal: How Evolution Made Us
Smarter Than We Think by Vladas Griskevicius and Douglas Kenrickuses evolutionary lens to explain irrational
decisions.

Reality
Check: How Science Deniers
Threaten Our Future

The battles over evolution,
climate change, childhood vaccinations, and the causes of AIDS, alternative
medicine, oil shortages, population growth, and the place of science in our
country—all are reaching a fevered pitch. Many people and institutions have
exerted enormous efforts to misrepresent or flatly deny demonstrable
scientific reality to protect their nonscientific ideology, their power, or
their bottom line. To shed light on this darkness, Donald R. Prothero
explains the scientific process and why society has come to rely on science
not only to provide a better life but also to reach verifiable truths no
other method can obtain. He describes how major scientific ideas that are
accepted by the entire scientific community (evolution, anthropogenic
global warming, vaccination, the HIV cause of AIDS, and others) have been
attacked with totally unscientific arguments and methods. Prothero argues
that science deniers pose a serious threat to society, as their attempts to
subvert the truth have resulted in widespread scientific ignorance,
increased risk of global catastrophes, and deaths due to the spread of
diseases that could have been prevented.

TEACHING

2017 is a good time, when
people are so aware of political chicanery, to advocate teaching critical
thinking in the public schools, not only in specific courses by that title, but
the encouragement of all teachers in all classes to ask frequent questions
about the content of their classes. And it could begin in K. Dick

(Washington, DC – July
31, 2012) – The power that comes from religious authority has been at the
center of all human societies from time immemorial–but those claims of
sovereignty have been disputed for just as long. In Damned Good Company: Twenty Rebels Who Bucked the God Experts,
author Luis Granados explores twenty cases, from Socrates to Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
of brave challenges against those claiming a special authority from God.

Damned Good Company is a book about
people, not about God. People who have preached about God, taken money for
sharing what they say they know about God, and ordered others about to enforce
what they claim to be God’s will–and a small band of heroes who stood up to
them.

In short, Damned Good Company is
a Profiles in Courage for humanists.

Some of the twenty heroes of Damned Good Company are
well-known: Erasmus, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Clarence Darrow, Atatürk, Nehru,
Steve Biko. Others are not: people like Han Yü, banished from the 9th century Chinese court for questioning the
worship of the Buddha’s finger, and Lucy Harris, who came within an inch of
deflating Mormonism before it got off the ground.

Each hero is contrasted with a
villain of his or her time and place: either a God expert like Martin Luther or
Joseph Smith or a cynical politician like Mussolini, who never believed in God
but exploited religion shamelessly to advance his political ambition.

The stories in Damned Good Company will
inspire those today who want to stand up to the Christian Right, the Muslim
fanatics, the oppressiveness of Catholic and Jewish orthodoxy, the rising Hindu
Taliban, and everyone else who claims a God-given right to tell the rest of us
what to do.

This enhanced ebook has been
extensively researched, with over 1,100 footnotes. It takes full advantage of
state-of-the-art features with over 100 photographs, online reader comments,
linked videos, and hundreds of useful web links.

Damned Good Company is available
from HumanistPress.com and
all major online ebook retailers.

Humanist Press is the publishing house of the American Humanist
Association, providing material for the humanist/freethought/atheist market
since 1995. The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for
the rights and viewpoints of humanists and atheists in the United States.
Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended
through more than 150 local chapters and affiliates across America. Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life
that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value
to self and humanity.

I’ve a
brief new article in the newSkeptical
Inquirer (July/August 2014) regarding Casey Luskin’s botched attack
on the second episode of Cosmos. Here it follows - your comments are welcomed.

Fox TV’s
Seth McFarlane has joined with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann
Druyan, Carl Sagan’s widow and collaborator, to continue Sagan’s marvelousCosmosseries of decades ago. The new
series is a splendid blend of homage to Sagan’s original one with dazzling new
graphics–and new discoveries.

The second
episode of the series, first broadcast March 16, 2014, covered evolution and
natural selection. (Link) As expected,
creationists were furious. The main promoter of “intelligent design,” Seattle’s
Discovery Institute, has run several anti-Cosmosblogs on its Evolution News and
Views (ENV) website.

In their zeal to attack Tyson and theCosmosseries,
however, the Discovery Institute has created a stunning example of the straw
man logical fallacy. This fallacy is so named because it involves attacking
one’s opponent not by an honest dissection of his or her actual views but by
attacking a caricature, a distorted misrepresentation
of those views. The Discovery Institute’s attack on the evolution episode of Cosmoswas a particularly egregious example
of this fallacy–a straw man for the ages, as it were. MORE click on author above

Freedom From Religion
Foundation

From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freedom
From Religion Foundation

TheFreedom From Religion Foundation(FFRF) is anAmericannon-profit organization based inMadison,Wisconsin, with members from all 50 states.[1]The
largest national organization advocating for non-theists, FFRF promotes theseparation
of church and stateand
educates the public on matters relating toatheism,agnosticismandnontheism. The FFRF publishes a newspaper,Freethought Today. Since 2006,
the Foundation has produced theFreethought
Radioshow.

The FFRF was
co-founded by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter,Annie Laurie Gaylor,
in 1976 and was incorporated nationally in 1978.[2]The
organization is supported by over 19,000 members[3]and
operates from an 1855-era building inMadison, Wisconsin,
that once served as a church rectory. According to the 2011 IRS tax Form-990,[4]FFRF
spent just over $200,000 on legal fees and services and just under $1 million
on education, outreach, publishing, broadcasting, and events. The allotment for
legal fees is primarily used in cases supporting theseparation
of church and statethat
involve governmental entities. FFRF also has a paid staff of thirteen,
including four full-time staff attorneys.[5]

Annie Laurie
Gaylor, co-president of the FFRF, is the author ofWomen Without Superstition: No Gods
- No Mastersand the
nonfiction book on clergy pedophilia scandalsBetrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse
of Children(out of print)
and editor of the anthologyWoe
to the Women. She edited the FFRF newspaperFreethought Todayuntil July, 2008. Her husband,Dan Barker, author ofLosing Faith in Faith: From
Preacher to Atheist,Godless:
How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists,The Good Atheist: Living a
Purpose-Filled Life Without GodandJust Pretend: A Freethought Book
for Children, is a musician and songwriter, a formerPentecostalChristian
minister, and co-president of the FFRF.

In March 2011,
The FFRF, along with theRichard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science,
began The Clergy Project, a confidential on-line community that supports clergy
as they leave their faith.[6][7]In
2012, it gave its first Freedom From Religion Foundation and Clergy Project "Hardship
Grant" toJerry DeWitt, a former pastor of 38 years who
left the ministry to join the atheist movement.[8]

Publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
Some contents of May/June 2016 number:
“Creators of the Paranormal” “How
Not to Do Science” “A Testament of
Belief Masquerading as Science” Book
reviews, including The Art and Science of
the Scam: Implications for Skeptics” --Dick

Contents
#1

Critical Thinking for Media Analysis

Fox Propaganda Techniques

Bin
Laden and Black/White Thinking

Labeling

Historical
Analogy

Demonization

Anti-Intellectualism

Global
Warming Disinformation and Denial

Al
Gore’s The Assault on Reason

Contents of #2

Hallucinations

The
Only Physicist in Congress

Natural
and Unnatural Thinking

Fallacies
and Ideologies

20
Logical Fallacies

Importance
of Dissent

Books
Reviewed in Skeptical Inquirer (Nov.
Dec. 2012) (the contents of every number devoted to CT) :

David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart,,,and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself.